Truman Compote
by Bill Yarrow
When it rains, I can really think. Was that
how it went? Well, maybe my memory's not
watertight, but what is these days? My eyes
widen at the coincidence of plashing verticals
and the stolid columns of the world. I love that
hopeless warfare. I always think of raindrops
as the underdogs, the frail insurgents of heaven
against the stumpy dictatorship of the material.
But now the rivers are rising and the streets have
bowed down to boats. The brick house can stand
up to the Big Bad Wolf but not to the water cannons
of the apocalypse. The rain is getting smarter.
The storm clouds are overpopulating. The sky is
scary. It's not your parents' revolution anymore.
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Author's Note
This poem appears in WRENCH (erbacce-press, 2009).
The poem appears in Pointed Sentences (BlazeVOX, 2012).
With time, we realize the corroisve power of those multitudinous underdogs. And I agree they are smarter than they were when we all were younger. I like this piece very much.
I found:
'I always think of raindrops
as the underdogs, the frail insurgents of heaven'
really lovely.
Perhaps I just like raindrop imagery. That excerpt reminded me of both Elizabeth Bishop's Sestina (the Grandmother's almanac one) and
'Beads of water on glass glittered like secrets.' - Julia Darling.
(It's from her poem 'End.' Which is very very worth reading.)
I like this take on rain very much though. Even not as metaphor it felt very tangible and an oddly plausible interpretation. We seem to spend our lives underestimating nature.
Wonderful phrasings here, Bill - "the frail insurgents of heaven
against the stumpy dictatorship of the material". Very nice. I like the whole nature of the real and the metaphorical in this piece. Good work.
a thunderstorm of metaphor
And so it goes. The rivers are rising indeed. Good work.
"Teardrops of the world unite..." Chico Marx
Sorry. I couldn't stop myself if I tried. Bill, I just found this poem. It's a magnificent piece.
This poem will change the way I see raindrops.
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